Technologies based on the use of composite materials are now being used increasingly in industry for the production of components. Thus, there has been a particularly large increase in the proportion of composites being employed in the field of aeronautics, constituting the so-called aeronautical structures. However, this trend towards materials that are poor conductors relative to the traditional components in metallic materials requires exhaustive protection of them against external agents such as electric discharges, mainly, in the case of elements that make up aircraft structures, for the discharges produced by a lightning strike. This protection is of the utmost importance when the component or element in question contains fuel vapours or potentially flammable atmospheres, as is the case for the fuel tanks or the wings of an aircraft, when these last-mentioned components also perform the function of fuel tanks. In these cases, all the internal zones must be protected to prevent discharges of incandescent particles or electric arcs that could become sources of ignition.
Despite current advances in protection against lightning and other external agents that involve an electric discharge, especially in the field of aeronautics, there are great difficulties in applying the proposed theoretical elements of protection at the manufacturing stage. This problem is especially pronounced in the area of the protection of edges of complex geometry in aircraft, for which a dielectric material (electrical insulator) is required along the entire length of the edge, in order to prevent arcs and discharges. However, it proves to be highly complex, from a practical standpoint, to apply insulating products on these edges, performing the function both of physical barrier and of electrical barrier, in a robust and integral manner, and throughout the working life of the component in question.
Means for protecting the edges of components made of composite material are known in the prior art. However, these means are expensive, as they are mainly carried out manually, and moreover said manual application is very difficult. Thus, sealing elements are known at present, which are positioned on the edges of components in composite material, but they present problems of durability with the passage of time, as they lose their integrity. The application of films or layers of insulating materials on the edges of composite components is also known (said application being carried out following manufacture of the component in composite material), these films or layers usually being constituted of glass fibre or some other layer of dielectric material. This solution has the drawback that it requires a laborious and expensive additional process, and it does not adapt correctly to surfaces of difficult geometry, for example those that have curvatures.
The present invention aims to solve the problems that have just been outlined.